So I’ve been a little lax in reporting in of late. My family and I went on
vacation and the last few weeks have been really hectic. But, I haven’t been
sitting on my laurels the entire time, I have been working.

While on vacation I worked on my short story which has the working title of
“Big Time”. Big Time is the story of a small time reporter, Theodore Chang, who
has big dreams and an attitude to match. It takes place in a far future world
where man has long since colonized the stars and has built a massive network of
portals to connect all the planets into one metaworld that they call Pangaea.
Theo gets a chance to do an exclusive interview of Gigacity’s most famous
serial killer–the Portal Killer. The Portal Killer had hacked his way into the
portal network and was using it to invade the homes of the rich and famous
through their private portals, killing them in their sleep. That is, until he
was caught. But then, why do people keep dying? Big Time should be a lot of fun
and hopefully a bit surprising.

Zombie Stomp! is also moving forward. I plan to playtest the game at the end of
the month and hope to have the rules written before then so I can hand them out
at the playtest. I’ll post them here first, of course. And the results of the
playtest afterwards too.

And I’ve also been working with my friend Benjamin on a joint venture to
produce web-based computer games for your enjoyment under the brand Hard
Boiled Geek. There’s isn’t much at our site
yet–actually there’s nothing–but Benjamin is working on that.

Our first game is a stock trading game called Corporate Raiders. If you want to
check out what the game has so far you can visit it at
corporateraiders.hardboiledgeek.com. The
game is still pretty young right now. We just have the mechanism to display
the status of the market. Our next step is to actually make the market move.
Then we can start adding features to buy and sell and start adding players.

Benajmin has a real knack for creating interesting companies for the fictitious
Atlantic Stock Exchange and reading the names and descriptions of these
companies can be a lot of fun. I encourage you to check it out and give us some
feedback on how it looks and the content. If we like you’re feedback we might
even name a company after you! Once we get some more functionality up and
running we’ll also want to start inviting some beta-test users. So if you’re
interested drop me a line at guy@guyroyse.com.

So, while I haven’t been posting much of what I’ve been working on, you can
probably see that I’ve been a busy little beaver. And, I’m have a lot of fun
making all this content, even if there isn’t much for you to see at the moment.
But when it comes, all these irons I have in the fire will be done at once. And
won’t that be fun!

I’ve been working hard on the Zombie Stomp! game-board and though I would share
a work in progress image so y’all knew I was working on something and hadn’t
abandoned the project. So, here it is.

As you can see, I have got the interior walls and structure in place and the
textures on the floor. I’ve also added doors but not any hatches yet. Exterior
walls, damage to the ship and large items inside of the ship are next. After
that, a nice spacey background and then details such as frost in the cryopods,
little yellow and black caution strips, maybe some blood splatters. That kinda
thing.

I’m also thinking I will need some kind of logo for the game. If anyone had
some ideas for a logo, suggest them in the comments or email them to me
directly. Major props will go out for whomever puts a logo together for the
game and epic props for the one arbitrarily selected by yours truly.

Once the board is done, I’ll start working on the PDF. I’m planning on
including in the PDF detailed rules and the game-board—conveniently sized for
printing on card stock, cutting up, and spreading out on the gaming table—plus
cutout zombies and humans that can be folded as little triangles and used a
game pieces.

Humans start with one pawn in Engineering, two on the Bridge, and three in Habitation.

All eight zombies are split evenly between the two cryopods.

Zombie are too stupid to use hatches (the little lens shaped things with T’s on each side). Only humans can use them.

The Port Cryopod, the Aft, and the outside of the ship are vacuum. Humans cannot enter these spaces unless they go through a hatch and suit up. Zombies can enter these areas just fine using regular doors. No significant depressurization of the ship occurs.

I plan to work on a better board, making it real purdy-like and everything
using GIMP, over the next couple of weeks. Once it’s ready I’ll post it. I’ll
probably post some preliminary stuff as well so you’ll see the sausage being
made and too keep feeding y’all content.

I also intent to work on the rules and play-test them over the next couple of
weeks. Expect those sooner as writing documents is easier than using GIMP. And
please, play-test the rules yourselves and give me your feedback. Either send
me an email at guy@guyroyse.com or drop your feedback in the comments on the
blog. The more data I have, the better.

And, of course, if you give me play-test feedback you’ll get props in the final
PDF. And who knows, maybe in an actual print version of the game some day.

Once I get the game finished I may make new maps if their is interest. I’m
thinking that a classic dungeon for a nostalgic D&D feel might be fun or
perhaps a small town Main Street—complete with a theater showing a zombie
flick— for that real B-movie experience.

This game will be released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike
license so that you and your friends can take this content, remix it, create
maps, expand the rules, or whatever. I heartily encourage you to do this. Right
now. Right this second. Go crazy! Just be sure to post links to your stuff in
the comments so everyone else can share in the fun.

Okay. So that’s Ozzy but it’s still a cool song. The Zombie Stomp never really
took off like the Monster Mash or the Transylvania Twist but don’t short it.
It’s damn cool. Cool enough to be a game. That’s right. I’ve been inspired to
make a game, a board game, by Ozzy Osbourne himself.

Actually, this is all a lie. Well, not all of it, just the Zombie Stomp! part.
It’s still a game. But Zombie Stomp! has a much to do with Ozzy as Java (that’s
a programming language for all those non-techies) does with coffee. The only
thing they have in common is the name.

Imagine if you will a subluminal ship deep between the stars. A skeleton crew
mans the ship while the colonists slumber thoughtlessly in cryogenic
suspension. But, of course, something goes wrong. A strange artifact impacts
the ship and the folks in cryo wake up with a craving for
braaaaiiiiinnnnnssssss.

Zombie Stomp! is a game of this particular space horror. Two players face
off—zombies vs. humans — on a game board that is the deck plans of a deep-space
colony ship. Pawns representing humans and zombies are placed across the board
as the players try to eliminate each other.

The rules are simple:

Humans run two squares.

Zombies shamble one square.

Move one pawn per turn.

Humans may move two pawns one square on a turn.

An attack counts as one.

Zombies go first since no one expects a zombie attack.

If there is an attack, each side rolls a six-sided die:

High roll wins.

Ties are just that: a tie. Try again next turn

If the winner is a zombie, the human pawn becomes a zombie pawn.

If the winner is a human, the zombie is removed.

I’m not sure how balanced this game is, so I plan to do some play-testing to
see who wins more often. If there is an imbalance, I’ll give the zombies or the
humans the advantage of winning a tie and see what that does.

I plan to produce a PDF containing the rules and the game-board once
play-testing is completed. There might be a few surprises in there. We’ll see
what I can come up with for you.

This game could easily be played on a chess board. Take eight white pawns and
place them at one end of the board. Take eight black for the other side and
just start playing. You’d need at most eight additional black pawns to play in
case the zombie get lucky.

In fact, why don’t you play some games on a chess board—or some other board of
your devising—with your buds and tell me about it in the comments. I’ll
incorporate your feedback into the game, maybe include some of the boards, and
give props to everyone that helped.